Smoking

Diary

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Smoking is more hassle than it’s worth

8 October 2022 9:00 am

I gave up smoking one year ago this week, as part of a series of pitiful capitulations to the forces…

A belter of a podcast, featuring a mad South African: Smoke Screen reviewed

23 July 2022 9:00 am

I go back and forth on tobacco companies. On the one hand, they are merchants of death. On the other,…

Saint Jacinda's war on fags

10 December 2021 1:20 am

It is a curious irony that the West’s leading progressive icon is probably the most authoritarian leader in the free world…

The WHO’s bizarre war on e-cigarettes

31 July 2021 9:00 am

The WHO’s fervent campaign against e-cigarettes

Covid has killed off our civil liberties

17 October 2020 9:00 am

It started with smoking. The 1960s and 1970s saw little popular objection to legislation restricting advertisements by private companies purveying…

If anything is ‘essential’ right now, it’s cigarettes

11 April 2020 9:00 am

The owners of my local grocery shop, a mile or so from my house, very kindly sell me cigarettes in…

How many Britons now vape?

21 September 2019 9:00 am

Talking Turkey David Cameron again accused the Leave campaign of ‘lying’ about the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. A…

Dear Mary: How much should I tip a black cab driver?

7 September 2019 9:00 am

Q. We have near neighbours in the country with whom I would not wish to fall out for all sorts…

Dear Mary: How do I stop people cadging cigarettes off me?

8 June 2019 9:00 am

Q. My mother died a few months ago. Her collection of colourful clothes, hats, shoes and an immense amount of…

The truth about air quality? It’s the best (and cleanest) in living memory

18 May 2019 9:00 am

We are, of course, in the midst of an air pollution crisis which, like every other threat to our health…

How smoking saved my life

3 November 2018 9:00 am

I almost got killed this week. I went for a very early morning walk in a New Hampshire forest, in…

Letters

13 July 2017 1:00 pm

Technical education Sir: I am grateful to Robert Tombs for highlighting the baleful use of ‘declinism’ as part of the…

Being anti-smoking damages your mental health

8 July 2017 9:00 am

I lit a cigarette in an open-air car park a couple of years ago as I was walking to the…

Smokers are paying for your pension

28 May 2016 9:00 am

Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and…

The vaping craze isn’t about nicotine. It’s about gadgets

14 May 2016 9:00 am

Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and…

An old man’s guide to living dangerously

9 April 2016 9:00 am

At 77, it is clear to me that increased longevity can be a curse rather than a blessing

Mark Twain was right: it is our redeeming petty vices that make life worth living

23 January 2016 9:00 am

Here I go again. I have stopped smoking. Until recently I had been smoking about 40 cigarettes a day, but…

She was Ariadne to my Theseus

12 December 2015 9:00 am

My contempt for vaping deepened as vaping contraptions became more ostentatious and people started hanging them from lanyards around their…

The smoking diary of Gregor Hens

12 December 2015 9:00 am

The link between smoking and self-expression is long-established. The only thing worse than not being able to smoke, says Will…

The wonderful, vanishing world of the handwritten letter

4 July 2015 9:00 am

In praise of the old-fashioned letter-writer

‘Quitting is suffering’: Hon Lik, inventor of the e-cigarette, on why he did it

20 June 2015 9:00 am

Hon Lik, life-saving inventor of the e-cigarette, on why he did it

Spectator letters: Allan Massie on the FBI; Christopher Booker on graffiti

13 June 2015 9:00 am

The long arm of the FBI Sir: The White House may be less willing than it was to play the…

The big fat myths of our ‘obesity epidemic’

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Obesity isn’t soaring, and it doesn’t strain the NHS

Dear Mary: What to do when a dinner guest won’t turn and chat

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Q. I felt uncomfortable during a dinner for 20 in a private house. The young man on my left had…